Jesse, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but you seem to have conflated two people in this story as well.
Michael Shellenberger is a respected and careful journalist, however there's also a different guy also named Michael Shellenberger that makes baseless claims and sloppy journalistic errors. They both write for *Public*, both using the same byline. They also look identical and attend the same events but are never in the same room at the same time.
I think you owe (good) Michael Shellenberger an apology for confusing him with (bad) Michael Shellenberger.
There is a crisis in journalism in this country (and throughout the world). Michael Shellenberger is not the tip of that spear. Far from it. He has helped expose the disaster that mainstream journalism has become. So two hit pieces in a row on Shellenberger is really bizarre. Not to mention quite disproportionate to Shellenberger's influence in the MSM, which unfortunately is pretty negligible. Makes me curious what is behind this sudden interest in him.
"hit piece" LOL. The guy is accusing people of being spies before Congress on the basis of a name mixup and his research is done on wikipedia. Grow up ffs.
Both more mainstream and more alternative journalism worlds need scrutiny. "Tip of the spear or we shouldn't spend time on it" looks to me a lot like "only white people can be racist" or "when the oppressed targets the oppressor, anything goes / it's always understandable." We need consistent expectations across the divides.
If Jesse publishes only investigations in anti-woke journalism fouls for the whole next year, that would be weird; but so far it's just one subject and a followup.
Jesse is literally trying to discredit Shellenberger as an "incompetent." So we can just disregard what Shellenberger has to say. Why listen to an incompetent psuedo journalist? Hence my description of these attacks as hit pieces. As for the first piece, what Jesse overlooks is that NBC and the other legacy networks have a free license to the airwaves. They have become mouthpieces for the DNC. Their licenses should be revoked and the airwaves leased out through a competitive auction process. The notion that they are serving the public interest is a complete anachronism, if it were ever correct. But today we should no longer ignore how blatantly partisan they have become. At minimum, this is a reasonable viewpoint that warrants public discussion. But it seems like Jesse is starting to shill for the MSM. Which is sad.
What is your response to the incompetence Jesse has illustrated so painstakingly in these pieces, and why are you so willing to ignored it to the point that you are criticizing Jesse for having pointed it out? CCuz so far the only conclusion I can come to is you are arguing in bad faith.
I agree, the emotional language, such as charlatan and incompetent, based on a grand total of two incidences so far, reads exactly like a hit piece. And he’s calling for more of Shallenberger‘s “critics” to respond. A curious target for him to choose given all the venality in the world and the utter abdication of journalism by the mainstream. Shellenberger is a very serious person. Perhaps his alignment of conscience with Trump is triggering Jesse‘s TDS that’s all I can think of.
Look up “hit piece” - the term applied to *false* accusations. Shellenberger is shown here to be a guy who makes serious accusations based on Wikipedia research on a person whose name he can’t keep straight. The piece yesterday showed Shellenberger misstating facts and misunderstanding the law. You want to continue trusting his elaborate conspiracy theories while he can’t get basics like this right? Please. He’s unserious.
By hit piece I was referring to the emotional nature of it, the vitriol and sweeping condemnation. But you’re right, Jesse no doubt did a thorough job as usual. You’re wrong about Shellenberger, though; he has been a warrior of the first rank in this fight against some of the same forces that harrow Jesse. His activism is apparently getting the better of his judgement at times. Not ideal, but understandable.
OK well hit piece is the wrong term for what you're complaining about. We'll have to agree to disagree on Shellenberger. It is not understandable. I also publish research and in a million years I would not make errors like this, let alone avoid accountability in the way that he has. It should be career cancelling.
Exactly! Shellenberger obviously made a bad mistake conflating two different people. Not a good look for sure. But how on earth does that turn him into a charlatan and justify dismissal of all his work? What a strange overreaction. Especially where the mistake in question doesn't even undermine his main arguments against the CCDH. That organization is involved in censorship operations. The identity of its founder is a subsidiary issue at best. Hopefully Shellenberger will be more careful in the future. But I for one will keep reading him!!
Look at how he’s “corrected” the error - retweeting a long tweet thread from 2023 with a correction buried at the very end. It’s a completely unethical and unprofessional correction that tells you everything you need to know about his commitment to truth telling.
It doesn't necessarily "undermine his main arguments" but you don't think it necessitates at least a closer scrutiny of his work? I actually like a lot of his work and appreciate much of what he has written about. But as a fan, I see this and get honestly concerned that, as one commenter wrote above, his "activism" has begun to color his "reporting" in a negative way that, if unchecked, could pose a serious credibility/integrity issue in the future.
Which, again, as a fan of his overall output, would be very bad IMHO.
Alt media is ascendent. Places like the FP, Megyn Kelly show, etc. have become much more influential and there are very few, if any, honest, fair-minded writers scrutinizing their output. I've been following Shellenberger for a while and his work has often been clouded by bias but since he's calling out other more or equally biased outlets/institutions people seem to give him a pass.
Criticizing the establishment shouldn't exempt one from criticism
I'm guessing what's behind Jesse's interest is he cares about accuracy in journalism. I read all his stuff and listen to every BARPod episode and I feel confident that's a bedrock principle for Jesse. He's sometimes a little reactive (get the hell off Twitter, Jesse! But then maybe we wouldn't have quite as much good BARPod content, so...), but he definitely has principles.
I think most people do at least some good work, and I'm sure Shellenberger is no exception. I'm sure he's done some valuable writing and advocacy over the years. But it's hard to overstate how fucked up it is to accuse the wrong person of espionage because you were too careless to even do cursory due diligence. The dudes' names are even spelled differently. This could have been really dangerous for the falsely accused. What Shellenberger did isn't in the realm of normal mistakes any journalist might make. It's really, really bad and well deserving of a searing critique.
He made a careless error a year ago and it is all well and good to point it out. But he has done and still does a lot of good work. This feud has evidently become personal.
Careless error? The entire basis for alluding to that guy being a spy is based on his bio, which Shellenberger got flagrantly wrong. His entire thesis is invalid because of the error!
It was a careless error, but that was absolutely not the "entire thesis" of the article. The article was about much more than Imran Ahmed. And the thesis that these speech-suppressing organizations have extensive government and intelligence connections in the UK and US is quite valid - a number of journalists have reported on this in recent years.
I'm reserving judgement on Jesse until I see more information, but it's not really a good look with what I've seen so far.
As for Shellenberger, the bit of the article Jesse quoted is a decent example of one of the ways Shellenberger's journalism bothers me: presenting a thesis based on innuendo and guilt by association and unsupported assertions, and then write as if the evidence is a lot more conclusive than it is.
Last year, Shellenberger wrote a piece about supposed UFO whistleblower David Grusch. He included Grusch’s claims about recovered alien spacecraft, but left out the claims about “non-human biologics” - i.e. alien bodies.
When asked about this in an interview, Shellenberger explained (I can’t remember the exact words) that he left it out because people wouldn’t believe it. He was interested in bringing credibility and legitimacy to the subject, and he was afraid that if he published Grusch’s allegations in full, it would undermine that mission.
This is when it became clear to me that he’s not a credible journalist.
I remember watching Shellenberger give testimony in congress alongside Matt Taibbi. Shellenberger came off as far more ideological than Taibbi, and he made very expansive claims in his testimony that were less supported than what Taibbi reported. He also sounded kind of stupid when he was being questioned, whereas Taibbi came out on top in his own fight with the hostile congressmen.
Jesse, I couldn't agree more. It's beyond sloppy for someone calling themselves a journalist to not only make this error themselves, but to testify to the error in a filing to Congress! I hope that a hit piece is not what it's called when you notice someone has made a significant error.
I appreciate the sunlight, but it's starting to look like the intent is more to burn than illuminate. Just reading between the lines, so take that for what it's worth.
I can’t help but wonder if Shellenberger being the opening speaker at the Denver Genspect conference is part of why Jesse was so suspicious of that conference.
Something about this feels personal, as opposed to the rigorous professional work Jesse normally puts out.
I can't see why that would bother Jesse, but I suppose he can speak for himself.
Shellenberger is one of a growing number of people who aren't avowed conservatives, but they often carry water for conservatives. And while I understand that, if right-wing media are the only outlets willing to give you a hearing, you talk to them, there is a limit. For example, testifying for the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government is, IMO, well beyond that limit.
I actually kind of like(d) Shellenberger and hadn't looked at his work too critically. Glad (I think?) to know my five dollars this month is exposing my blind spot.
I also enjoyed his recent JRE interview. My head hurts now.
I think Shellenberger is one of the good guys. I also think he's putting out lots of content that, perhaps, should be slowed down for more rigorous fact-checking.
I look forward to him publicly addressing some of this. That will tell us a lot, either way.
There’s an odd internet charlatan echo-chamber - I’ll call it a “Fauxcus group” since Shellenberger likes bad puns. It has a lot to do with people who live within a citation laundering network (Christina Buttons has some good writing on it).
When he lauded Stanford’s Jay Battacharya over Covid I grasped he was both staggeringly misled and quite superficial. Battacharya is a medical charlatan of a supreme order, whose “research” concluded that 80,000 people in Santa Clara already had already been infected by Covid - by end March 2020. Physicians who were actually epidemiologists refuted the claim in a few lines. He and his research team couldn’t do elementary arithmetic. It didn’t even require statistics. But it was wrong and he attempted to use it to drive policy about a global epidemic.
The usually reliably strange magazine Reason cited Battacharya as why we should be suspicious of COVID, until the readers started saying quite literally that it’s fine that all the oldies die anyway, they just consume Social Security. At least their trans medical reporter had the temerity to agree that following Bhagtacharya we would conclude that the infection rate was 150-175% as we saw people dying, and was not probably real.
Battacharya then doubled down - more research emerged of an identical nature with the same (false, bizarre) conclusions in the South. Recall that dead people were piled up in hospitals in NYC about this time - but a month or so later, he co-authored the “Great Barrington Declaration” which advocates that everyone go out and get Covid “We can get herd immunity without vaccines”.
Hindsight is wonderful - we can’t even get immunity with vaccines - Great Barrington would have been a Catasteophic flop - but they have at least made the disease for the most part nonfatal. His work on a lawsuit against the Trump and Biden administration’s work to suppress spreading anti-vaccine and other Covid critiques was “brave”.
As some doctors blend ideology with trans treatment - claims that affirmation is a great thing - we see other doctors blend ideology with infectious disease - Covid infection is a good thing. Neither is evidence-based but they certainly support a damaging world view.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Shellenberger is a, anti-vaccine Kennedy know-nothing. Those type of writers tend to move in clusters. Bhattacharya certainlh is a fan.
When one supports another who follows another I ou them into the semi-humorous pile and watch for the more egregious statements. I wasn’t aware he was a “professional writer”.
J.S.: "Michael Shellenberger is a conspiracy theorist who should not be taken seriously, and who doesn’t engage in even the barest due diligence before sleazily and publicly accusing people he dislikes of being spies."
I know, which is why I haven't been that interested in your last couple of pieces. But thank you for your service in bringing this fact to a wider audience.
Jesse, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but you seem to have conflated two people in this story as well.
Michael Shellenberger is a respected and careful journalist, however there's also a different guy also named Michael Shellenberger that makes baseless claims and sloppy journalistic errors. They both write for *Public*, both using the same byline. They also look identical and attend the same events but are never in the same room at the same time.
I think you owe (good) Michael Shellenberger an apology for confusing him with (bad) Michael Shellenberger.
Ah, like Good Ash and Bad Ash from Army of Darkness.
There is a crisis in journalism in this country (and throughout the world). Michael Shellenberger is not the tip of that spear. Far from it. He has helped expose the disaster that mainstream journalism has become. So two hit pieces in a row on Shellenberger is really bizarre. Not to mention quite disproportionate to Shellenberger's influence in the MSM, which unfortunately is pretty negligible. Makes me curious what is behind this sudden interest in him.
"hit piece" LOL. The guy is accusing people of being spies before Congress on the basis of a name mixup and his research is done on wikipedia. Grow up ffs.
Both more mainstream and more alternative journalism worlds need scrutiny. "Tip of the spear or we shouldn't spend time on it" looks to me a lot like "only white people can be racist" or "when the oppressed targets the oppressor, anything goes / it's always understandable." We need consistent expectations across the divides.
If Jesse publishes only investigations in anti-woke journalism fouls for the whole next year, that would be weird; but so far it's just one subject and a followup.
Not hit pieces
Also if you'd read the first piece you'd have the answer to your question
Jesse is literally trying to discredit Shellenberger as an "incompetent." So we can just disregard what Shellenberger has to say. Why listen to an incompetent psuedo journalist? Hence my description of these attacks as hit pieces. As for the first piece, what Jesse overlooks is that NBC and the other legacy networks have a free license to the airwaves. They have become mouthpieces for the DNC. Their licenses should be revoked and the airwaves leased out through a competitive auction process. The notion that they are serving the public interest is a complete anachronism, if it were ever correct. But today we should no longer ignore how blatantly partisan they have become. At minimum, this is a reasonable viewpoint that warrants public discussion. But it seems like Jesse is starting to shill for the MSM. Which is sad.
You’re not even trying to address Jesse’s accusations. Maybe start there before veering off into something not related.
What is your response to the incompetence Jesse has illustrated so painstakingly in these pieces, and why are you so willing to ignored it to the point that you are criticizing Jesse for having pointed it out? CCuz so far the only conclusion I can come to is you are arguing in bad faith.
I agree, the emotional language, such as charlatan and incompetent, based on a grand total of two incidences so far, reads exactly like a hit piece. And he’s calling for more of Shallenberger‘s “critics” to respond. A curious target for him to choose given all the venality in the world and the utter abdication of journalism by the mainstream. Shellenberger is a very serious person. Perhaps his alignment of conscience with Trump is triggering Jesse‘s TDS that’s all I can think of.
Look up “hit piece” - the term applied to *false* accusations. Shellenberger is shown here to be a guy who makes serious accusations based on Wikipedia research on a person whose name he can’t keep straight. The piece yesterday showed Shellenberger misstating facts and misunderstanding the law. You want to continue trusting his elaborate conspiracy theories while he can’t get basics like this right? Please. He’s unserious.
By hit piece I was referring to the emotional nature of it, the vitriol and sweeping condemnation. But you’re right, Jesse no doubt did a thorough job as usual. You’re wrong about Shellenberger, though; he has been a warrior of the first rank in this fight against some of the same forces that harrow Jesse. His activism is apparently getting the better of his judgement at times. Not ideal, but understandable.
OK well hit piece is the wrong term for what you're complaining about. We'll have to agree to disagree on Shellenberger. It is not understandable. I also publish research and in a million years I would not make errors like this, let alone avoid accountability in the way that he has. It should be career cancelling.
Exactly! Shellenberger obviously made a bad mistake conflating two different people. Not a good look for sure. But how on earth does that turn him into a charlatan and justify dismissal of all his work? What a strange overreaction. Especially where the mistake in question doesn't even undermine his main arguments against the CCDH. That organization is involved in censorship operations. The identity of its founder is a subsidiary issue at best. Hopefully Shellenberger will be more careful in the future. But I for one will keep reading him!!
Look at how he’s “corrected” the error - retweeting a long tweet thread from 2023 with a correction buried at the very end. It’s a completely unethical and unprofessional correction that tells you everything you need to know about his commitment to truth telling.
It doesn't necessarily "undermine his main arguments" but you don't think it necessitates at least a closer scrutiny of his work? I actually like a lot of his work and appreciate much of what he has written about. But as a fan, I see this and get honestly concerned that, as one commenter wrote above, his "activism" has begun to color his "reporting" in a negative way that, if unchecked, could pose a serious credibility/integrity issue in the future.
Which, again, as a fan of his overall output, would be very bad IMHO.
You seem like you skimmed the articles but didn't actually read them
Alt media is ascendent. Places like the FP, Megyn Kelly show, etc. have become much more influential and there are very few, if any, honest, fair-minded writers scrutinizing their output. I've been following Shellenberger for a while and his work has often been clouded by bias but since he's calling out other more or equally biased outlets/institutions people seem to give him a pass.
Criticizing the establishment shouldn't exempt one from criticism
I'm guessing what's behind Jesse's interest is he cares about accuracy in journalism. I read all his stuff and listen to every BARPod episode and I feel confident that's a bedrock principle for Jesse. He's sometimes a little reactive (get the hell off Twitter, Jesse! But then maybe we wouldn't have quite as much good BARPod content, so...), but he definitely has principles.
I think most people do at least some good work, and I'm sure Shellenberger is no exception. I'm sure he's done some valuable writing and advocacy over the years. But it's hard to overstate how fucked up it is to accuse the wrong person of espionage because you were too careless to even do cursory due diligence. The dudes' names are even spelled differently. This could have been really dangerous for the falsely accused. What Shellenberger did isn't in the realm of normal mistakes any journalist might make. It's really, really bad and well deserving of a searing critique.
He made a careless error a year ago and it is all well and good to point it out. But he has done and still does a lot of good work. This feud has evidently become personal.
Careless error? The entire basis for alluding to that guy being a spy is based on his bio, which Shellenberger got flagrantly wrong. His entire thesis is invalid because of the error!
It was a careless error, but that was absolutely not the "entire thesis" of the article. The article was about much more than Imran Ahmed. And the thesis that these speech-suppressing organizations have extensive government and intelligence connections in the UK and US is quite valid - a number of journalists have reported on this in recent years.
I'm reserving judgement on Jesse until I see more information, but it's not really a good look with what I've seen so far.
As for Shellenberger, the bit of the article Jesse quoted is a decent example of one of the ways Shellenberger's journalism bothers me: presenting a thesis based on innuendo and guilt by association and unsupported assertions, and then write as if the evidence is a lot more conclusive than it is.
Yes. Seems that way to me, too.
Jesse we (those of us who still care about truth in reporting) are so lucky to have you!
Last year, Shellenberger wrote a piece about supposed UFO whistleblower David Grusch. He included Grusch’s claims about recovered alien spacecraft, but left out the claims about “non-human biologics” - i.e. alien bodies.
When asked about this in an interview, Shellenberger explained (I can’t remember the exact words) that he left it out because people wouldn’t believe it. He was interested in bringing credibility and legitimacy to the subject, and he was afraid that if he published Grusch’s allegations in full, it would undermine that mission.
This is when it became clear to me that he’s not a credible journalist.
EDIT: here is the interview:
https://youtu.be/ZwRy-Ap7lxQ?si=TK_q125pViHkvWK3&t=2968
The relevant section begins at 49:30 and lasts about two minutes.
I remember watching Shellenberger give testimony in congress alongside Matt Taibbi. Shellenberger came off as far more ideological than Taibbi, and he made very expansive claims in his testimony that were less supported than what Taibbi reported. He also sounded kind of stupid when he was being questioned, whereas Taibbi came out on top in his own fight with the hostile congressmen.
That call must have been VERY counterproductive
Jesse, I couldn't agree more. It's beyond sloppy for someone calling themselves a journalist to not only make this error themselves, but to testify to the error in a filing to Congress! I hope that a hit piece is not what it's called when you notice someone has made a significant error.
Jesse's got Shellie's NUMBER this week!
I appreciate the sunlight, but it's starting to look like the intent is more to burn than illuminate. Just reading between the lines, so take that for what it's worth.
I can’t help but wonder if Shellenberger being the opening speaker at the Denver Genspect conference is part of why Jesse was so suspicious of that conference.
Something about this feels personal, as opposed to the rigorous professional work Jesse normally puts out.
His journalism here seems pretty rigorous to me…?
I can't see why that would bother Jesse, but I suppose he can speak for himself.
Shellenberger is one of a growing number of people who aren't avowed conservatives, but they often carry water for conservatives. And while I understand that, if right-wing media are the only outlets willing to give you a hearing, you talk to them, there is a limit. For example, testifying for the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government is, IMO, well beyond that limit.
The pieces explain why it bothers Jesse at length. So weird to have people engaging on something they haven't read
You misunderstand me. I mean, I can't see why JS would care that Shellenberger spoke at Genspect.
These two articles on Shellenberger is why I subscribed.
are why?
I actually kind of like(d) Shellenberger and hadn't looked at his work too critically. Glad (I think?) to know my five dollars this month is exposing my blind spot.
I also enjoyed his recent JRE interview. My head hurts now.
I think Shellenberger is one of the good guys. I also think he's putting out lots of content that, perhaps, should be slowed down for more rigorous fact-checking.
I look forward to him publicly addressing some of this. That will tell us a lot, either way.
Super sloppy work. Must be thinking about his pending Trump appointment.
There’s an odd internet charlatan echo-chamber - I’ll call it a “Fauxcus group” since Shellenberger likes bad puns. It has a lot to do with people who live within a citation laundering network (Christina Buttons has some good writing on it).
When he lauded Stanford’s Jay Battacharya over Covid I grasped he was both staggeringly misled and quite superficial. Battacharya is a medical charlatan of a supreme order, whose “research” concluded that 80,000 people in Santa Clara already had already been infected by Covid - by end March 2020. Physicians who were actually epidemiologists refuted the claim in a few lines. He and his research team couldn’t do elementary arithmetic. It didn’t even require statistics. But it was wrong and he attempted to use it to drive policy about a global epidemic.
The usually reliably strange magazine Reason cited Battacharya as why we should be suspicious of COVID, until the readers started saying quite literally that it’s fine that all the oldies die anyway, they just consume Social Security. At least their trans medical reporter had the temerity to agree that following Bhagtacharya we would conclude that the infection rate was 150-175% as we saw people dying, and was not probably real.
Battacharya then doubled down - more research emerged of an identical nature with the same (false, bizarre) conclusions in the South. Recall that dead people were piled up in hospitals in NYC about this time - but a month or so later, he co-authored the “Great Barrington Declaration” which advocates that everyone go out and get Covid “We can get herd immunity without vaccines”.
Hindsight is wonderful - we can’t even get immunity with vaccines - Great Barrington would have been a Catasteophic flop - but they have at least made the disease for the most part nonfatal. His work on a lawsuit against the Trump and Biden administration’s work to suppress spreading anti-vaccine and other Covid critiques was “brave”.
As some doctors blend ideology with trans treatment - claims that affirmation is a great thing - we see other doctors blend ideology with infectious disease - Covid infection is a good thing. Neither is evidence-based but they certainly support a damaging world view.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Shellenberger is a, anti-vaccine Kennedy know-nothing. Those type of writers tend to move in clusters. Bhattacharya certainlh is a fan.
When one supports another who follows another I ou them into the semi-humorous pile and watch for the more egregious statements. I wasn’t aware he was a “professional writer”.
Just more of a Fauxcous group kinda guy.
J.S.: "Michael Shellenberger is a conspiracy theorist who should not be taken seriously, and who doesn’t engage in even the barest due diligence before sleazily and publicly accusing people he dislikes of being spies."
I know, which is why I haven't been that interested in your last couple of pieces. But thank you for your service in bringing this fact to a wider audience.
Reminds me of my father's firm belief that it wasn't Shakespeare wrote the plays but another man with the same name.